Harry Potter, The Deathly Hallows and the badly managed Plot

This week we went to see Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part one. I have to admit that I read the book simply as I had read all of the others, it is often said that the books become ever darker as the series continues however I would probably say that it felt more bogged down as the series continued and what is often considered depth is in fact simply over populated plot strings. This, for me, all culminated in a very, the best word I can think of here is boring, 1st half of the final book. This first half in my opinion should have been left out altogether in the movie (it could have been handled better with a five minute background scene.) Instead the fear of the ending of one, if not the, highest earning, franchises made them see fit to make it a stand alone movie.

The film starts with an overly active first set piece in which they rescue Harry and are attacked by the Death Eaters - Always reminds me of a gang of 12 year old wanna be gangsters - It then descends into a seemingly endless set up of staring, moping and sulking which seems to last endlessly and use up considerable amounts of the good will towards these characters who have been the main stay of English Cinema for the best part of a decade.

There are a couple of cringe worthy scenes, not least an impromptu, in appropriate and untimely dance sequence between Harry and Hermione which was as ungainly in it's delivery as it was superfluous to the plot. The plot is overly twisted and convoluted whilst at the same time being shallow to the point of confusing what is going on, There are so many quests all happening at once with the search for the Horcruxes that contain the soul of Voldemort as well as details of the Deathly Hallows - three magical instruments that can give the owner the power over death itself - however these details seem to be thrown in at the last minute to justify the films title, finally in case the search for these 8 items was not enough to confuse they decide the flow of the narrative is best served by throwing in a search for the Sword of Griffindor!

There are of cause some very good performances, after all the main protagonists have had 7 years experience and Helena Bonam Carter always gives a great performance as the demented Bellatrix.

Still I am happy to say that I infinitely preferred the second half of the book to the first so perhaps we may find that splitting it into two halves will leave a really great movie to close out the series, this one however in set ups for a final showstopper this movie was more Matrix Reloaded than Empire Strikes Back.